So, since my book will offend certain religions, countries, and stuff, I decided to make it fantasy. This means I'll be having the counterpart of, say, Christianity, caucasian, europe, roman empire, and things like that. This way I can offend the IDEA of religion, the system, and bla bla bla.

But then I'm out of ideas about the names.For religion, I have Carthean as the counterpart of Christian. There's also Maelism as this other religion(which has a goddess called Mael, hence the name. Then again, -ism religion name shouldn't be a problem).And the rest, I'm blank.Right now I'm looking for a good name for the counterpart of Hindu, Buddha, Jewish, Judaism, Abrahamaic, and stuff.Also some continent and ocean names.

When it goes to a character's names, or a name of a town(or maybe even a country), I had no problem with. But things like continent, religion names, ocean, there are not that many of them in the real world, so I have trouble finding a good 'pattern' or 'characteristics' that can be used to create a name myself.

So...any ideas?

Picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up 3000 times the memory.

By counterpart, do you mean the exact same religion or historical period with only a different name? Because in that case, you may as well just use the normal name. People aren't so dull that they won't recognise the exact same thing behind a thin mask.

If the counterpart is only loosely based (on the original religion, social period, race, etc.), then research the history of that religion, race, etc. specifically its naming-culture (and general culture too, so you don't make too many assumptions and do anything ridiculous). Learn the culture around names, whether they are assigned by gender, class, geographical area, etc. and you can use the same or a similar pattern in your novel.

For the names of religions, finding out different words in the (original) culture they are from could be a good starting point. Find a word that embodies the religion, and then manipulate or corrupt it as you see fit.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

Tiger

"A superman ... is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do."Nathan Leopold

My book is set on an alternate universe, and the topic will explicitly criticize religion (The IDEA of religion, not specific religion).

So far my researched lead to finding that Judaism is based on this certain kingdom (called Kingdom of Judah), which existed around 8th century BCE. So turned out I have to start with naming this kingdom to make it correspond with the history and relation in my book (at least until the point of the start of the story).

And for Christianity-equivalent name, I have Cartheans, which, I think is very poorly done so I'm thinking of another one. Christ means the anointed one in greek, so I know how to start naming my version of it.

So, for a name of a kingdom, and a word to represent (replacing christ) the base of the religion, anyone have any ideas?

There's another issue, actually, which is language. I don't think I'm going to create a language for this alternate universe, just using existing languages and naming it differently or something. But...if it's to create the right 'feel' that it's not just a copy of the real-version, (which it actually is, but only until the point in the time of the start of the story), should I ?

Picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up 3000 times the memory.

Oh please. If you write anything about religion in any form, odds are you're going to offend somebody somewhere. That's the beauty of free speech.

Trust me, even if you change the names people are going to figure out. I say just come up with your own religion. In my fantasy book the world's religion is a mashup of Polytheism, Christianity, Buddhism, and a few others. But while thinking it up I was never thinking about any of that. Any type of religion you make up is going to have certain elements of some that are real in our world. We all know religion has it's flaws, and yes they should be criticised in my opinion. For all the good religion has done there have been countless instances where people have used it as an excuse to do terrible, inhumane things.

Anyway, back to your question. For the kingdom who warships christianity I'd suggest making it something that perturbs to "The One." One God, one Christ, one way. In my opinion it's more clever to name things after the idea of what they represent rather than just making them sound similar.